Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to have an opportunity to continue. I have addressed the amendment to the throne speech and now I have an opportunity to finish what I was saying when my time ran out, and that is to put forward some thoughts on the Kyoto protocol.
First, one thing I find fascinating is that no matter where we are from, as members of Parliament, we are expected to be experts on all these various subjects. The Kyoto protocol of course involves some very scientific and technological information, stuff that not all of us necessarily would know firsthand, so we have to do some research. We have to try to listen to both sides of the equation.
I recently had the opportunity to travel to Calgary. I met with some of our crown corporation officials during the day and in the evening I attended a dinner at which the Prime Minister spoke. Of course everyone was quite astounded that close to 900 people would be in attendance at that dinner.
I got to talk to a number of oil company executives, people who, generally speaking, are afraid of the impact of the ratification of Kyoto. They had spent some time during the day meeting with the Prime Minister and putting forward their concerns. They shared those concerns with many of us that evening.
I use this example because these are fairly learned individuals. I am not talking about people who, as some suggest, may be some charter members of the flat earth society and who may from time to time speak on this issue from this place. They are individuals who have done their homework and have had their staff and various companies do the analyses. They are expressing concerns, and I do not take them lightly. We have to listen to their concerns.
One thing I heard from them was that we could not put the burden of the war on climate change on the oil industry. I agree with that. In fact that evening the Prime Minister said in his speech that it was only one part of the solution, one part indeed of the problem.
I received a letter today which highlights my point about people who are learned and who know the situation. I will not mention the gentleman's name but he is a professor of geology from Kelowna, British Columbia. The letter identifies the real issue in Kyoto. He says that he believes climate change is the result of the melting of glacial ice which occurred 10,000 years ago. This is a professor, so I assume he knows a little of his stuff and has studied the matter.
His answer to what causes climate change is that naturally occurring events result in changes in solar radiation which lead to climate change: the eccentricity of the earth's orbit; the tilt of the earth's axis; the procession of the earth's axis; and sunspot cycles. He does not believe that human action, the things that we do in the production chain in our daily lives such as driving our vehicles and building our homes, is causing climate change. I do not know.
It seems to me that the average kid in grade three thinks that what comes out of the smokestack or the back of an automobile tailpipe, or burning coal or that kind of thing does something to the atmosphere. Yet we have a professor who says that the problem is caused by naturally occurring issues around the axis of the earth, which obviously we have no means of controlling.
I look at that and ask if that makes any sense. I am not a professor of geology. I have not studied the scientific impacts of this. However, in terms of common sense, it leaves me somewhat frustrated. We all know there are things we can do to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
I was in Calgary recently and I met with the president of Nascor Inc. I would invite anyone to see this company's operation. It builds prefabricated walls, floors and trusses for homes that are very highly insulated with byproducts, by the way, from the oil industry. It is right in Calgary and it has done studies showing that if its housing systems were used in the construction of a home it would increase the cost of an average home by $500 but that it would reduce the cost of heating that home by 50%.
Nascor Inc. has a system which, if it were used nationally across the country in the construction of housing, would probably on its own meet the Kyoto requirements that we are talking about. However we are not about to institute a national building requirement that says that we must use this company's product. The company has to go out and promote its particular product, and it is doing that in the housing industry.
What we can do, and I say this to those who are opposed to the Kyoto protocol, we as the national government can ensure that any of the housing projects in which we are involved will at least be insulated to the same level that Nascor's housing system would insulate and therefore reduce the cost of housing. The natural benefit of doing that would seem obvious. We could save people money in heating their homes and we could meet the Kyoto protocol requirements.
There is another aspect to saying that what we do has no impact. There is the impact on transit and how we move people. Again I go back to Calgary. In the area of Garrison Woods, a community with which some in this place might be familiar, a project was developed by Canada Lands Company Limited, a company that is a crown corporation of the Canadian government. Sixteen hundred units have been built in this project and not one door is more than a five minute walk away from municipal transit. It is a very creative project and is celebrated as a true success story in municipal planning and development. Once again, if people can walk five minutes to get to a bus, maybe if that bus is available, on time and reasonable, they will use that public transit vehicle and leave their automobile at home.
That is another area where obviously the government has led the way in terms of Canada Lands and one in which we can lead the way in working with municipalities, with our partners. I received a news release today about the $250 million that was given to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for green infrastructure. This is another area I submit that would lead to us meeting the Kyoto requirements in the Kyoto protocol.
We have to make a decision as parliamentarians. Maybe it is because it is the opposition's job to be a little obstreperous and to oppose the government, because that is what it is told to do every day when it goes to a caucus meeting, but there are some thoughtful people in the opposition. There are some thoughtful people in the oil fields. There are some thoughtful people in Kelowna, British Columbia. I have to say to them that they cannot possibly believe that human activity does not have a serious impact on the quality of the air that we breathe. It is just not reasonable to suggest that it is all a part of the ice age, the melting of the glacial ice cap. It is just not reasonable to believe that.
I have heard criticism after criticism from members opposite and from the media that there is no leadership being shown. By announcing that there will be a vote in Parliament on the Kyoto protocol before the end of the year, contrary to the statements being made in somewhat emotional ways that there will be no plan, there will be a plan put before Parliament before the vote is taken.
Will it dot every i and cross every t ? Will it solve every problem? I doubt it. We need to take the time to study the issue fairly in an unbiased way. We need to recognize that there is a serious problem in pollution and work together with the industries in Alberta and right across the country so that we leave a better climate and a better atmosphere for our children.